Comentario sobre Números 17:17

TWELVE RODS. Aaron’s rod was one of the twelve, since it does not say: “and you shall take a rod for the house of Levi and write Aaron’s name upon it” [but instead it says in the following verse, And thou shalt write Aaron’s name upon the rod of Levi]; for he was included in the number mentioned. Thus Joseph was counted as only one tribe [and not as two separate tribes — Ephraim and Menasheh], the reason being that the tribes of Israel are always counted as twelve, and because He counted Levi [here as one tribe], He counted Joseph as only one. I will explain this further in Seder V’zoth Habrachah,¹⁹¹Deuteronomy 33:6. if G-d will bless me to reach it [in my commentary].

דבר אל בני ישראל וקח מאתם, "speak to the children of Israel and take from them, etc." The expressions דבר plus קח suggest that we are speaking about two separate subjects. G'd said דבר, referring to the fact that 1) the Israelites were to bring one rod representing their respective tribes; 2) Moses was to accept these rods from them. Although the Torah did not spell out who was to bring these rods to Moses, the letter ו at the beginning of the words וקח alludes to this. [The problem is that the Torah did not spell out exactly what it was that Moses was to take from the children of Israel. Ed.] An additional reason for the Torah to write וקח with the extra letter ו may be that this demonstration was additional to the conversion of the 250 censers into covers for the altar which had also been described as being a memorial to what happened to Korach and associates. The people had to be given visual evidence that G'd had chosen Aaron.

שנים עשר מטות, “twelve staffs.” Aaron’s staff was included in the twelve, seeing that it does not say that Moses should take the staff of Levi and inscribe Aaron’s name on it, but it does say: “inscribe Aaron’s name on the staff representing the tribe of Levi.” In other words, there already was a staff representing the tribe of Levi. The tribe of Joseph was represented here by only one staff as it is axiomatic that the total number of tribes in the Jewish people would be 12 at all times.

V. 17. דבר וגו׳. Wir haben zu Kap. 1, 2 entwickelt, wie nach ihrer Verzweigung aus dem einen gemeinsamen Urstamme die Stämme des jüdischen Volkes :מטות Äste heißen, und finden sie daher hier in "מטות" den sprechendsten Ausdruck. Insofern jedoch ein jeder Stamm wieder eine besondere Eigentümlichkeit innerhalb des gemeinsamen Nationalganzen auf seine Angehörigen vererbte, bilden sie ein jeder ein besonderes בית אב innerhalb des einen gemeinsamen בית ישראל. Als מטות werden sie daher in ihrer Gleichheit, als בתי אבות in ihrer gesonderten Eigentümlichkeit begriffen. Indem daher hier die zwölf בתי אבות des jüdischen Volkes durch zwölf מטות repräsentiert werden sollen, so ist damit dem Gedanken Raum gegeben, dass ungeachtet ihrer eigentümlichen Sonderheit sie doch vielleicht wegen des charakteristischen Gemeinsamen einer Gleichheit hinsichtlich der hier zur Entscheidung stehenden Beziehung gewürdigt werden könnten, oder ungeachtet der gemeinsamen Gleichheit die charakteristische Sonderheit einer solchen Gleichwürdigkeit entgegenstehen könnte.

וקח מאתם מטה מטה, “and take from each of them a staff;” seeing that they are still complaining about the tribe (מטה) of Levi being the one G-d has selected to perform special duties, they were to realise that the significance of handling incense was not something that applied only to Aaron, but that Aaron’s tribe, the Levites, had a special role to perform. There was a need to demonstrate this by an additional miracle.

THOU SHALT WRITE EVERY MAN’S NAME UPON HIS ROD. Some commentators¹⁹²I have not identified these sources. See Ibn Ezra. explain that this refers to the name of the founder of the tribe: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah. The correct interpretation is that it means the names of the [present] princes [of the tribes at that time], and He considered Aaron the prince of the tribe of Levi. It was necessary to explain¹⁹³In Verses 18 and 21. that they each had only one rod and one prince, meaning: “Even though I have divided them [the Levites] into two families, the priests separately and the Levites separately, yet they are [in fact] one tribe, and have only one prince. The reason for this is as I have explained,¹⁹⁴Above, Verse 6 (towards the end). that they only needed proof that it was that tribe [i.e., the tribe of Levi] which was chosen out of all the tribes of Israel [to minister in the Tabernacle].

Nachmanides writes that there are some scholars who believe that the meaning of the words is that the names of the respective staffs were Reuven, Shimon, Levi, etc., but this is not correct. The names inscribed were those of the princes of each tribe at that time, i.e. Elitzur, Shlumiel, etc, and Levi’s prince was Aaron.

מאתם…מאת כל נשיאהם, "from them…from all their princes." The reason the Torah said both מאתם and did not content itself with writing מאת נשיאהם, is to ensure that Moses would accept these rods only from the princes and that he should not set aside 12 rods on behalf of the respective tribes. Had the Torah only written that Moses was to take these rods from the princes this would not have obligated the princes to come forward and present Moses with these rods. Moses could have acted as their representative and assigned a rod for each tribe. Alternatively, we could have thought that if the Torah had only written the words מאת נשיאהם this meant that the rods should be the property of the various princes but that Moses should take them, i.e. select them; therefore the Torah added the word מאתם to teach that the princes themselves must bring these rods to Moses. At any rate, the reason the Torah was so specific was to prevent anyone from claiming afterwards that Moses had selected a rod for them that never had a chance to blossom and that therefore the fact that Aaron's rod blossomed did not prove anything.